Key Northern City Remains Stalemated

Stalemated some 10 months after both Syrian government forces and rebels announced a battle they believed would be “decisive” for the civil war, Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, is gearing up for another influx of Syrian troops.

Both sides have been adding troops here and there for quite some time, but with the capture of Qusayr the Syrian government appears to be increasingly ambitious about winning the war outright, and sees a major assault on Aleppo as the key.

The idea that Aleppo is the next target is in keeping with what Hezbollah officials were saying last weekend, that they believed Aleppo was the next logical destination after Qusayr. With the border town now decisively in government hands, supply routes to Aleppo, the industrial and financial hub of Syria, are more convenient for Assad forces.

Rebel officials have suggested their focus is elsewhere after the battle of Qusayr, with Gen. Salem Idriss, the head of the Free Syrian Army, predicting more battles inside neighboring Lebanon as a priority, with rebels looking to hit back at Hezbollah by targeting Lebanese towns.

397255 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.antiwar.com%2F2013%2F06%2F09%2Fsyrian-troops-massing-for-assault-on-aleppo%2FSyrian+Troops+Massing+for+Assault+on+Aleppo+2013-06-10+00%3A39%3A06Jason+Ditzhttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D39725 to “Syrian Troops Massing for Assault on Aleppo”

The whole situation is Stalemated from the beginning. Despite the Syrian army with it 1-2 million soldiers can clean any region, village or town, it is hard to do it, because sometimes/often(?) civilians need to be protected as well as the buildings.

A group of terrorists always can go to any place in any given country in civilian cloths and take weapons smuggled into those places before. If the army comes, they throw away the weapons and are again "civilians". … and do the same thing later again.

A good solution of getting these criminals attracted from any country worldwide with useless Arabs would be the use of poison gas – the only way to save the houses of the Syrian people. Now possibly you understand to "noble" clever USA "red line" of poison gas use in Syria.

At this point sending arms to overthrow a sitting government of whichyou have dealings with can only come from the great satan who destroys anything and everything all for the zionist entity to control the arabs with nuclear weapons is a faux pas they will be routed by the Syrian army and all those who started this should be made to pay for the destruction caused by their actions.

The important point to watch will be whether the Syrian Army merely pushes the rebels out of Aleppo, or cordons them in and attempt to kill them all either in the city or as they try to escape.

If they cordon it off, they'll likely destroy the city, but they'll also likely inflict massive losses on the rebels that won't soon be made up.

If they do push them out, I'd expect they'll push them into another cordon, the reduction of which would not destroy so valuable a place. But that is more of a risk than just doing it where they already have them.